Two key things that I check in my pocket before stepping out of the home are my Navigo card and my headphones. It has been about a year since I got addicted to podcasts, and I now find unimaginable to not listen to them while walking/travelling alone. It will be fair to say that podcasts have almost completely taken over my headphone time over the past year.

For the uninitiated, Podcasts are the internet version of good old radio shows. Consider them similar to audio-books, but a hundred times more interesting. The best feature of podcasts is that you can download them on your phone, using certain apps, and listen to them even without internet connectivity. Podcasting apps typically download the latest episodes when the device is connected to home WiFi, and arrange the episodes in chronological order using the information provided by the RSS feeds. Yeah, the same old RSS feeds that were a rage during the blogging era!

Every few weeks, I try to refresh my subscriptions by discovering and adding new podcasts to my list and getting rid of those which were not up to the mark, beyond first few episodes. Hence, this list will be periodically updated with the list of new shows as well as my feedback on the ones which I unsubscribe. Over the next few days, I will curate this list a bit more by arranging them by categories, and adding more details about each one of them.

Pic credits: https://unsplash.com/photos/TMOeGZw9NY4

1) Non-fiction Storytelling - He came in for the storytelling, but stayed on for the content

Serial- Season one of the Serial Podcast was probably the most famous podcast in the history of this planet. A thrilling narrative, mixed with investigative journalism, of a murder mystery. Season two was a dud.

Start up - Story of and narration by Alex Blumberg, of 'This American Life' show, about starting his own company (season 1). Currently on Season three, this show makes up for a good background chatter while working

2) Business & Finance - My favourite category, with a very high entry and purge frequency

Planet Money - Mostly economics, sometimes financial concepts, explained in bite-sized 15-30 mins episodes. Good storytelling, and a huge archive to delve in. I usually download 20-30 episodes in one go before long journeys

The Investors Podcast - Mostly talk about HNWIs and their habits. More importantly, I listen to it for the crisp book reviews and recommendations

3) Others - This category on my app has seen everything from Game of Thrones discussions to Monday morning inspirations. Usually, subscribe them for lazy Saturday afternoon background noise.

Reply All - Broadly categorised as a show about the internet. Some of the episodes are really interesting, discussing the internet culture, people of the internet world and a lot of other things

99% Invisible - From the show description, "99% Invisible is about all the thought that goes into the things we don’t think about — the unnoticed architecture and design that shape our world"